


Present Imperfect

by turbulent_flow (mirandaskye)



Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-28
Updated: 2012-10-28
Packaged: 2017-11-17 05:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/548316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirandaskye/pseuds/turbulent_flow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They’re polar forces, night and day, winter’s frost and summer’s fire, nothing like each other and every bit the same; a bilingual love affair neither can define.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Present Imperfect

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2012 F1Slash Summer Slash

“You know that feeling you get when you don't know how you feel about something?”

It's comfortable and comforting how they fit together, the words they speak half-formed without conscious thought and without apprehension, the echoes of all those other shared moments between the two of them carrying them whenever silence falls. One of those silences stretches now, the passing of time counted only by the clouds scudding overhead, and it shouldn't be as easy as it is. They've been adversaries almost since they first climbed into karts, each held up to the other as an example, as a rival, and even if he's a little ahead right now he knows Jules will catch up with him sooner rather than later.

“I had it all planned out,” he says eventually. “How it's supposed to be, how's supposed to go.”

“And now?”

“And now it's not like that.”

Times change, mutable as the seasons, the ebb and flow of fluctuating fortunes. That's always been the way between them, right back to the first time Jules looked up at him with a suddenly thoughtful expression on his face and reached up, pressing his fingers into Charles' mouth to silence his query. He tried to catch hold of his hand but Jules smiled and somehow he was sucking Jules' fingers instead, tongue flicking delicately across the tips. One thing led to another and he didn't – doesn't – have regrets but he wonders sometimes what would have happened in another reality, another world, a life in which they were pushed apart and not together.

“You and me,” Jules says meditatively. “It would have been good, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he says, and perhaps they would have been, in that other life. The Sun and the Moon, caught up in an endless, harmonious celestial dance.

He gets poetic sometimes, underneath the stars, but only in his head.

***

He sees _him_ first as he gets out of the shuttle bus and from that first moment a face stands out in the crowd Charles can't take his eyes off him, so distracted that it takes him a while to remember that he's supposed to be getting into his overalls so he can be photographed with the car in front of the Eiffel Tower. He doesn't stop looking, though, when he can. Dark hair, dark eyes, a uniform that sets off his height and strong muscles to perfection, and the air of casual authority he wears so easily all add up to a very attractive whole in Charles' mind and it works to distract him from the dullness of the shoot itself and the formalities afterwards, making conversation he doesn't really care about with people he cares about even less, mentally counting down the minutes until he can leave.

He's never really considered himself as having any sort of _thing_ about uniforms, not really, but the way his new conquest just pushes him down to his knees when they get back to the hotel room and holds him there, his uniform cap clasped between his fingers and half over Charles' face so that all Charles can really see is the bright _Police nationale_ badge, is pretty much perfect. His conquest doesn't even bother getting fully undressed, and that's fine too. Next time, Charles thinks, they might try using the handcuffs.

“Give me your number,” his conquest says afterwards. He adds, teasingly, “Or I could always call up your team and tell them I want to speak to Charles Pic.”

Charles rolls his eyes, shaking his head. “Give me yours.”

His conquest complies readily enough. “Call me. Next time you're in Paris.”

Charles taps the number into his phone and, since he can't actually remember the man’s name and thinks it might be the wrong time to ask, saves it as, simply, _Eiffel_.   
  
The next time he's in Paris they don't talk much more than they did the first time but Charles makes sure to steal the cap as a souvenir.   
  
***

The clicking of the malfunctioning air-con unit wakes him from sleep, a repetitive irritation in his ears. Charles yawns and stretches, and as he moves Jules stirs too, turning to elbow him.

“It's still dark. Go back to sleep.”

Charles grins to himself. Jules has had a bad Saturday race; he's desperate to do better tomorrow, under the eyes of Ferrari management, and midnight sex probably wasn't on the agenda. Charles has other ideas; instead of letting himself sink back into sleep, he pushes lightly against Jules' shoulder.

“What? Leave me alone,” Jules mumbles, but he rolls over obligingly anyway, onto his front, and Charles wraps himself round him, over him, pressing him down into the sheets. He can still smell everything he's learned to associate with racing and a race weekend on Jules' skin; it's always the same when they're together like this – however many showers they take, it lingers for days. But underneath that, mixed in with that, is the intermingled scent of sweat and come that brings to mind all the other times he's swallowed down Jules' come, washed it off his body, watched Jules twist and arch in sudden, sharp ecstasy.

“Do you think of me?” he asks abruptly.

Jules' eyes half-open. “What?”

“Do you think about me?” Charles says again. He runs a hand up Jules' arm, across his shoulder, rubbing his fingertips against the curve of Jules' ear. “When you fuck someone else?”

Jules turns into the touch, sighing. “No.”

“Don't lie; I've ruined you for anyone else.”

Jules' face twitches, a hint of a smile he tries to hide. “Don't flatter yourself.”

“You can't stop thinking about me; admit it.”

“If I say yes, will you let me sleep?”

“Oh no,” Charles says, leaning down to press his lips against the nape of Jules' neck. “Not for a while, anyway.”

***

It's not, technically, his fault, what happens with Timo, as he finds himself explaining to John Booth rather less poetically than he'd like because he doesn't have the words to express how it is in English. It's not just fucking, or fucking with his teammate; it's a love affair of need and want and freedom, soft cries in his ear and warm skin against his, blood thrumming in his ears and adrenaline coursing through his veins, soft kisses and come smeared on his skin.

He doesn't have the words to tell John any of it.

“It's not about _morals_ ,” John says tiredly as Charles stares fixedly at the Marussia logo on his shirt and tries to look like he's hanging on every word John says. “It's about the team.”

Charles could make a wisecrack about that but he sees the look on John's face and decides to keep his mouth shut. John is on his hobbyhorse now – the good of the team and working together and _not fucking things up_ and all the things Charles has heard before and cares about as little now as he did back then.

Later Timo will tell him, _sorry, sorry_ , but Charles doesn't really care about the photo Timo took on his phone and he's almost sorry that Timo has to delete it. It's not a good photo, technically speaking – unfocused and under-lit – but there's something quite beautiful about the way Timo's hand is resting on the small of his back, holding him down, and the way Isabell's hand rests against his face in gentle encouragement. A frozen moment in time, as readily disposable as anything else in his life.

***

The radio is playing Christmas carols and reindeer bells when he wakes up and although the clock says it's only four o'clock the sky outside is already dark, which means he's overslept and they really should have left hours ago. Charles swears under his breath and shifts, elbowing Jules in the side.

“Wake up. We're late.”

He's always waking Jules, prising him from languid sleep in a hundred different hotel rooms. Time passes in so many ways: the minutes and hours of nothing much, the turning of the year, the progression of the racing season, the phases of the moon, the milliseconds that lie between the top step of the podium and the rest of the field. Without their shared dream, they might never have met in the first place, but the same thing that draws them together also pushes them apart and always will. Charles wonders sometimes what it would be like to live without it, to take all the life and fire that Jules offers and pay it back in kind. To live without the dizzying, spiralling addiction that consumes them both, senses muted and blood unspilled.

“You look like you're thinking,” Jules says sleepily.

“I am.”

Jules nods and wriggles closer, sliding an arm around his waist. “So am I. Mostly about kissing you.”

Charles works a hand over the fading marks on Jules' back when he fucks him: battle scars, injuries long-healed if not forgotten. Jules tenses, not liking the reminder, and starts to bring a hand back to push him away and something makes Charles take hold of his wrist before he really knows what he's doing, pressing Jules' hand against his side and holding it there, using it as leverage to hold Jules down. He expects some sort of protest about that – but Jules says nothing and, after a moment, he feels the tension in Jules' body ease.

They get dressed in silence afterwards, not looking at each other.

***

He's fairly sure he's been pissed off at Jules before but this – _this_ is a whole new level of anger he didn't think he was capable of achieving.

“He's my brother, for fuck's sake...”

“What's that got to do with it?”

“My _younger_ brother.”

“He's nineteen; old enough to make up his own mind,” Jules says, unrepentant and defiant. “What do you want me to say? I don't owe you anything and you don't owe me.”

The truth hurts – it does, for days or maybe weeks until the season starts and he can take out his anger on the track, wheel to wheel with Jules – and he can't really put his finger on _why_ it hurts the way it does. They've never made promises to each other, never laid claim on each other in any way except the most primeval. Preserving whatever karmic balance exists between them has always mattered more and it doesn't – shouldn't – matter if Jules fucks Arthur, or a teammate, or anyone else.

But it does.

***

He gets poetic sometimes, when they’re lying together underneath the stars.

They’re polar forces, night and day, winter’s frost and summer’s fire, nothing like each other and every bit the same; a bilingual love affair neither can define. They’ll push and they’ll pull but they'll keep coming back to each other because they don’t know how to do anything else.

“I don’t know how I feel,” he says, and in the end it doesn't matter. It's played out in all the words Charles can't say and the words Jules won't. It's all the things that keep changing and the things that stay the same.

“It could have been good,” he says, and it is.


End file.
